Could medical pot lead to boon economy?

The seizure last week of three sophisticated indoor marijuana growing houses, containing 769 plants weighing approximately 150 pounds in Webster, makes me wonder if we are missing a golden opportunity to improve the local economy.

With years of expertise and contacts, I am thinking these community growers could easily turn their illicit trade into booming and legal medical marijuana businesses.

Everyone would benefit. The local community would get some much needed tax revenue. The electrical company, whose meter was bypassed in the Webster operations, would get paid, and instead of being a drag, the operators would be a boon to the community.

But if there is big money to be made in medical marijuana enterprises, Massachusetts aims to bogart the joint. To ensure its dominance, the state, under the guise of public safety concerns, quickly moved to neutralize the small community dealer who has spent years risking arrest and jail time in diligently supplying his upstanding clients of lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, police officers and such.

This neutralization was effectively done through measures that made it cost-prohibitive for small community dealers to land one of the 35 medical marijuana dispensaries the state wants to license.

To even get consideration, a potential dispensary owner must show that he or she has at least $500,000 in operating funds on hand. Once this financial capacity is established, the potential owner must survive a two-phase application process carrying a $1,500 fee for the first application and $30,000 for the second. Both fees are nonrefundable. The 35 applicants selected from this process would be then subjected to a $50,000 annual certification fee and a $500 annual registration fee.

But if the small community dealer was shut out of the legal business, the selected dispensary companies are likely to sustain the biggest hit.

That there will be enough medical-marijuana-approved clients to create a booming industry is as certain as the leaves turning color in the fall. What is not as certain is whether these dispensaries will be able to attract and keep the number of clients necessary to stay afloat.

First, some clients might find the dispensary cost prohibitive. Under state regulations, individuals with medical marijuana prescriptions are required to pay a $50 annual registration fee. The fee allows the individual to purchase up to a 60-day supply of marijuana, considered by the state to be about 10 ounces. This can be expensive. At Canuvo Inc., a medical marijuana dispensary in Maine, for example, it is $350 an ounce.

If you can establish financial hardship, but are able to pay a $100 yearly fee, the state will allow you to grow your own supply. That won't be a popular prescription, however, given the opposition that most local police departments have to the law.

So with the authorized dispensaries overpriced, to whom will the medical marijuana users turn? To the small community dealer, of course, because while he might have been priced out of the legal business, he still has a big advantage over the legalized dispensaries: The ability to grow marijuana with low overhead.

So illegal grow houses will continue to flourish, and more people will be jailed for growing the drug illicitly. Medical marijuana dispensaries will perhaps have to keep raising prices to get something back on their investments, which means medical marijuana users will have to pay a higher than necessary price for their medications.

The state, of course, will be having a blast, and why not, the way it makes a dope out of us.